Feb 14, 2008

When it comes to backing up , be in practical life or computing , we enthusiastically come forward advising people the benefits of backup . However , it's another fact that not many of us will really do it or are in the habit of backing up until our system crashes and we end up losing precious data : those snaps , curriculum vitae ... the list is endless . The reason why we do not like to create backups is it takes too much time . Backup requires planning : what to back up , how are you going to do it . Should it really be this hard ? The answer is NO , at least for our computer data . There is an easy way.

Backup any file (even of type .exe) , any folder of any size to email in exactly 2 clicks reliably and immediately : simply right click the file/folder , choose backup to email from the context menu that pops up . And it's done!

It can't get better than this . Backup to Email will do the aforesaid job for you . As the storage size for the email boxes provided by Google , Yahoo , or MSN increases to gigabytes, it's really a nice idea to use them for backup . All you have to do is download the set up file , install it and do configuration settings . If you do use Gmail you have to setup it the way it is shown in the image above. Make sure you check the Requires Authentication and SSL options and provide your user name and password . When you enter in the settings screen the email address where you want to backup files, then the rest of the details (like outgoing SMTP server, requires authentication, SSL) are entered automatically for you for known mail servers.

How it works : it automatically zips your file/folder in chunks of 10 MB (that's the max. attachment size for Gmail) , appends the extension .mp3to filename so that it bypasses Gmail filters , and finally ferries those chunks one by one to the predetermined mail account . The good part is that it does all this without slowing down your computer as compared to other alternatives like Gmail drive . Now comes the reliability part : in case of dropped connection it will re-attempt the transfer 100 times at two minutes intervals .I'll often back up after working hours on an assignment--just in case my hard drive chooses that moment to die . This is one of the most useful program I have found for backing up the data and surely deserves to be kept in my tool belt.